BEYOND – Day 13

Browsing the internet for volumes about Heaven and the afterlife, I came across an interesting little book written by a lady named Yvette LeBlanc. In her book she asserts that she has done “astral projection” many times into heaven and comes back to report that “there are many heavens and many hells and they are still evolving.” And even beyond that, “we help create them.”

With that last statement I will cautiously have to agree. She has indeed created her own picture and image of the afterlife where she believes she is going to go. Of course, she’s wrong… and one second after she dies she’ll find out the truth. Many others do the very same thing. I hear it all the time. So will we all.

Heaven and Hell as concepts and destinations, are places that we take by faith as existing. We trust what the Bible tells us and we trust the only one who has truly been there and done that; seeing both the reality of Heaven and the reality of Hell. Jesus Christ describes a literal, joyful place that is awaiting those who die in Him. And He sought with the cross, to show us the extent His love would reach to keep us from going to an eternal destination separated from God forever in Hell.

And yet, people insist on filling in blanks that Jesus left. We have a curiosity about these eternal matters. Yet we can walk past the clear teaching of God’s Word about it as though it has no more authority than Ms. Leblanc’s strange adventures in astral projection.

In Heaven is for Real, the little boy who is said to have gone to heaven for a visit, mentions being fitted for wings because he needed a new set that was smaller. And when he encountered his grandfather, he had “really big wings.” What amazes me is that we can read right past a statement like that and no one catch the fact that this little boy was having an experience in direct conflict with biblical teaching. We do not “get fitted for wings” anywhere but in cartoons we have seen on earth. As spiritual beings, we don’t become angels… we rule them! If Jesus came out of the tomb on Easter morning with wings, then I’d say bring them on! But that did not happen. And yet we turn such nonsense into best selling books and movies because we don’t know the Scriptures’ clear teaching about the afterlife.

So you might ask: Dr. Smarty Pastor, how do you know Ms. Leblanc didn’t visit the afterlife in astral projection?

Simple. I looked at her photograph on the back of the book.

Just sayin.’

FOR MEMORIZATION: For our citizenship is in heaven…. Philippians 3:20

FOR REFLECTION: As you carefully consider your eternal destiny, are your thoughts more informed by popular culture or God’s Word?